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Editorial

Harming the working class

Union backs heath-care law that threatens its own members

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Friday September 20, 2013 5:05 AM

The situation that hundreds of Columbus janitors find themselves in, poised for a strike if employers shift from full-time to part-time workers, illustrates how labor unions often put politics ahead of the best interests of their members.

Members of the Service Employees International Union and other labor groups who supported President Barack Obama’s sweeping health-care overhaul now are seeing the results of a cobbled-together and rammed-through law that was a collection of payoffs in service of an agenda, rather than well-conceived legislation.

In Columbus, the SEIU is bargaining with the Columbus Area Service Contractors Association, which represents seven cleaning companies that work for various companies in central Ohio. The main sticking point is a proposal to reduce full-time workers from 70 percent to just 15 percent of the work force, in response to requirements under the Affordable Care Act.

The local janitors who are members of the SEIU are among the latest groups of employees nationwide who are learning of the ill effects of the ACA. The law is not driving down costs as promised, and requires employers to offer health insurance to employees working as little as 30 hours per week — 25 percent below the 40 hours that traditionally has defined full-time work.

The 30-hour threshold apparently was one of the smoke-and-mirrors ways that the ACA was to achieve more-universal health-care coverage. The problem is that in the real world, employers need to find ways to offset suddenly higher costs; the result among a growing number of employers including restaurants, schools and retailers has been a move to cut workers’ hours to keep them below the 30-hour weekly threshold. If the idea was to help hardworking people with modest incomes, the exact opposite has resulted.

This lack of foresight on the part of the law’s authors and its supporters is bad enough. But it’s truly sad when those being hurt are represented by organizations that continue to support the ACA and its authors for politics and money.

Even as local janitors were facing the threat of reduced hours, the SEIU’s head office announced it would partner with the U.S. Health and Human Services Department on a “major national outreach initiative” for the ACA. SEIU members will target 30 cities in 14 states, including Ohio, to promote the very law that is threatening their members’ livelihoods.

“Let there be no doubt, the new health-care law is working for working people,” said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in a statement. Henry blamed “extremist Republicans” for trying to undermine a law that supposedly benefits working people.

At least some unions are honest enough to admit that the law they backed needs changing, even before it is fully implemented. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, said last month that the ACA “wasn’t thought completely through.” He said he would support legislation to change the law’s definition of full-time work to 40 hours, since he’s seen many workers’ hours being cut.

“That is obviously something that no one intended,” Trumka said in an August interview with the The Christian Science Monitor.

Whether by mistake or design, the law, as Trumka says, actually is hurting the working class. For a union to continue to stump for the law and contend that it is working as intended is baffling. Just ask the Columbus janitors.